Friday, January 22, 2010

Is the innovation in car design dead? Or is retro simply something that designers have used throughout a century or more of car design.

Some will say the last decade was a golden age of design. Audi and BMW from Europe and Cadillac from America produced truly sculptured cards. Others will say the myriad of different shapes and styles we had in the late fifties and early sixties were better. Sure they were oversized gas-guzzlers, but they were all unique. In between we had the boxy cars of the seventies, eighties and the nineties. So what will the next decade’s cars look like?

Will all future cars look the same? Will brand loyalty and customer service be the only differentiators. It looks like the 3 cars below, the Opel Corsa, the Renault Clio and the Ford Fiesta could have been designed by the same team.

Is it inevitable that manufacturers will borrow ideas from each other? After all, fundamentally all cars have 4 wheels, an engine and a body with styling that is sometimes new and sometimes a through back from the past. What more can designers make out of it?

Will future cars take the aging population in consideration? The average new car buyer in the USA is 40 years old. And with predictions that future drivers will continue driving until an advance age, ergonomically designed features for boarding and seating, visual aids like side and rear-view cameras and aids to improved night and rain vision, etc. will be high on designers’ mind. At the same time more people are moving to cities and their car demands are different due to the congested driving conditions. From a design point of view these future city cars will need to focus more on how to deal with the stop-start traffic conditions, maybe even automate it. In car entertainment and information systems/Internet/Television will become strong selling points, and cars will probably be greener with near-zero emissions.

The last few years we have seen many retro designs based on cars designed many years back. Look at the new Ford Mustang (below, bottom) and compare it to the 1969 Mustang (below, top.)

One company in California, N2A Motors is now taking retro to its maximum state.

Simply known as the 789 (below), the car combines the front headlights and grill from the 1957 Corvette, the sleek side lines of the 1958 Chevy Impala and in the rear, the “bird in flight” tailfins of the 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. Truly a unique and stunning looking retro car.

The 789 from N2A Motors

The cost of converting the 789 from a stock C6 Corvette is $80,000 and the owner has to provide the base C6 Corvette, which retails for about $60,000. A unique car for a cool $140,000.

Friday, January 15, 2010

While most people are pouring out love, compassion and money, and offer services, and governments pledging support and sending rescue workers and other needed professionals and logistics, and others still stunned and gape as it plays of on the television screens in our sitting rooms, at the total calamity in Haiti, after this week’s devastating earthquake. Along came Pat Robertson, televangelist and a public voice for the conservative Christianity in the US and exclaimed on his TV show, the 700 Club, that the earthquake happened because Haiti made a pack with the Devil years ago.

(Juan Barreto AFP / Getty Images / January 14, 2010)

Robertson said: "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the Devil said, okay it's a deal." You can watch the video here.

(Photograph by Lisandro Seuro, AFP/Getty Images)

[So Pat, you're saying these photos are God's handiwork?]

Pat, you’re right. Something did happen a long time ago. You either lost your brains or had a temporary lapse of any reasonable feeling of humanity for people in chaos and devastation, caused not by a God punishing the Haitians for being a part of the Devil’s gang, but by a natural phenomenon any school kid can talk to you about. Luckily old Pat is an isolated nutcase case.

A few hours later Robertson retracted his statement and got his knickers even further in a twist when he said he thought he heard the location was Hades. He said: “For the life of me, I thought God was punishing Hades, which does in fact have a pact with the Devil.” This in itself is a weird statement.

I can only presume he is talking about Greek mythology and Hades being the god of the underworld and also the name of his habitation, the place of the dead. So he is mixing mythology with faith and religion with earthquakes and Greek gods with God and fictional places with actual cities and…What the hell was he talking about? And, he also knows for a fact that there was a pack between the Devil and Hades. This man is well informed, no shit about that. Been there, saw it, bought the t-shirt, hey?

Sorry to say this Pat, but you might be suffering from Alzheimer’s. I don’t wish it upon you, but speak to your doctor, have it checked out. It’s a serious disease. In the meantime...

Sunday, January 10, 2010

In a previous post I wrote about Kentucky’s famous stonewalls. At the back of my property I also have an old stonewall, which run for a large part all around our subdivision. My portion, dividing the backyard from a community park, which was in a previous lifetime a farm, hence the stonewall fence, was covered by many creepers and honeysuckle shrubs and a rusted barbed wire fence mangled between the creepers. For several years I have been toying with the idea to remove the foliage and at the end of the past summer and into early autumn I tackled the ‘issue’ head on.

The decision to remove the shrubs was not an easy one because it gives us a lot of privacy in summer and to some extent in the winter too, even without leaves. But I removed just the layer of shrubs inside my property. There is still another 5 – 8 meters of shrubs and trees between the stone wall and the start of the park.

A portion of the wall after it was cleared from shrubs and creepers.

I still have to clear about 40 feet of wall. After I removed about three quarters of the bushes I stopped. Cooler weather was coming on fast and I still had to fix the wall in some places where it caved in from age or where the sandstone has simply been eroded by rain and nature. The clearing of the bushes was a tiresome and slow-going job, especially removing the barbed wire and the old iron posts.

A large portion where the wall eroded or was damaged by humans

The damaged portion after repairs. I had to fix several other lesser damage areas too.

Leveled and repaired. The photo shows only about 50% of the wall that was cleared and repaired. The other 50% is behind my right shoulder. The dark green at the end of the wall is still to be cleared.

This is the portion still to be cleared. I am still in doubt about it. The wall behind it does not look well preserved. Also, it is now one ‘wall’ of a secluded portion of the garden. Removing the foliage may destroy the feeling of being secluded and surrounded by garden.

I don’t expect to find any surprises in liquor stores with drive-through windows.

That’s why I prefer to buy wine in big city mega-stores. The little local suppliers around here cater mainly for the below average or mass produced well-known wines. I guess that’s to be expected if half the store space of these smaller stores is devoted to beer, hence, the drive-through window.

If you out shopping there is probably nothing that gives you a bigger kick than to find something that you like or would like to have and at a bargain price. This happens a while ago when I had an hour or two available to slowly cruise the aisles of a big liquor store in Lexington. I came across a Petrolo “Torrione” Toscana 1998 for below $25, marked down from $46 because it was the last in the bin. And there was little chance on them getting anymore because only 38,000 bottles were made that year.

The Fattoria Petrolo (above) with its famous winery is located on a slope of the Aretini hills that overlook Tuscany’s Chianti region. The estate is about 1 kilometer away from the towns of Mercatale Valdarno and Bucine, 30 km northeast of Siena, and 40 km southeast of Florence. The farm, which also produces sought after Extra Virgin Olive Oil, was part of the medieval fiefdom of "Galatrona" and its tower (torrione in Italian), built in the 12th century atop Roman ruins, still exists and is featured on all the labels of the winery’s wines. The winery makes just two red wines: “Galatrona” a pure 100% Merlot and “Torrione” a pure 100% Sangiovese. Furthermore, the winery specializes in small batch production where quality is far more important than quantity. In general they produce only about 3300 cases a year of “Torrione” and even fewer cases of “Galatrona”.

So why was I so excited to find a Petrolo wine? Petrolo wines are nearly always rated in the 90’s out of 100 on the wine rating indexes. And nearly all highly rated wines like that are normally out of my financial range from a non-special occasion prospective. For example, the 2007 “Torrione” has just been named as one of Wine Spectator’s top 100 wines of 2009 with a 94 rating, and the “Galatrona” 2004 is rated at 97/100. Of course, at the time of buying this specific bottle I had no idea what the 1998’s rating was, I simply bought it because it was a bargain price for a Petrolo wine. Nor am I really someone that cares that much about wine rating in general, because it’s another man’s taste description of the wine. Each person has its own likes and dislikes in wine, but I would agree, it could be useful in giving you some idea of what others think about it, when buying wine, especially if it is a foreign language label.

The Galatrone tower on the hill above the vineyard

When I recently made a Greek leg of lamb with rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes the culinary occasion was favorable to open the Torrione. It had a little sediment, not unusual for an old wine, and there’s nothing wrong with sediment, but I nevertheless poured it through a wine filter/”sediment catcher”. The color was deep, dark red, nearly garnet, turning purple at the glass’s edge. But that’s unfortunately where the good part of the story ends.

I am not one that can or would really like to describe wine in some of those imaginative words like muscular, energetic, racy, big-boned, easygoing, lively, poised, graceful or angular (what the hell is that?), but I do understand the terms flabby, tinny, bitter after taste, even thin/lean as oppose to full-bodied. All of the last mentioned terms applied to the Torrione. The wine was a disappointment! I expected a full-bodied, smooth drinking or supple wine with soft tannins and intense aromas. What I got was a dry, nearly harsh red wine that tastes like any other cheap, mass-produced red wine, sold in gallon bottles (ses-man kanne) and through drive-through windows, and at best, drank after it was in a refrigerator for a day or two.

Did I buy a bad bottle of wine or a bottle of bad wine? Sangiovese, famous for being the heart of Chianti, Brunello and many super Tuscan wines, is a difficult grape to grow and even more problematic to turn into a good varietal wine. Many wine lovers either loves it or hate it as a varietal, but when it is done right the grape's soft tannins, tasty acidity and moderate to intense blackberry and cherry flavors make Sangiovese very easy to drink and a versatile wine at the dinner table. When in Italy and at home I have tasted many good Sangiovese wines and because Petrolo’s other vintages of Torrione are highly rated by experts and the fact that I found during the research of this post that both Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate magazines gave the 1998 Torrione 89 out of 100 rating, I have to conclude that I bought a bottle of bad wine and not a bad bottle of wine. It probably overheated at some point in time, or was badly transported or was stored for a long period at uncompromising environmental conditions.

To use clichéd expressions, wine is like a book that should not be judge just by its cover; the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

It has been 5 years since I last set a foot on the beach. 2004 in Bloubergstrand to be exact. It has been even longer, far longer than I can remember, since I last stayed seaside for a week or longer. For someone that grew up not too far from the sea I never realized how much I missed it.

The very next day after my previous post about snow and the cold that arrived in Kentucky, we trekked south to Florida’s Space Coast, Cape Canaveral to be specific, for a week of sun, sand, wind and waves. The weather was mostly good, high sixties to mid-seventies. Can’t expect much more, after all, it is winter down there too, but it was a far cry from the thirties and below in Kentucky.

We took little M with to experience the ocean and the big sandpit for the first time in her life and, because Orlando is just an hour’s drive away we also popped into Disney World’s Magic Kingdom the day after Christmas to introduce her to Mickey, Minnie and their many other friends. Man, there were a lot of people! I would like to utter the old South African saying of ‘there were people for Africa’, but in reality they were from everywhere over the globe. What adults won’t do to get into a traffic jam was the thought that came to me while there.

The Castle at Animal Kingdom

For the rest of the time it was just lazy-ing around on the beach or around the swimming pool, feeling the sand between your toes, walking in the shallow waves, or what I liked most, with a condo overlooking the beach, just camping out on the balcony with a glass of wine or a bottle of Sangria in the late afternoon, watching the surf and listening to the rhythmic song of the waves crashing on the beach as the sky got darker. Inevitably Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene Part 4 and especially Part 6 came to mind.

Unfortunately, after a week this idyllic life came to an end and we had to return to gray skies, frozen soil and icy winds blowing snow flurries around. But there is always the hope of returning soon.

A single fisherman on the beach on Christmas morning.

Port Canaveral is home to several cruise ship companies. From here they launch their ships to the Caribbean islands. One of the interesting things that we saw was how the cruise ships came in to port. They just seem to disappear into land as they enter a narrow channel that leads to the docks.

Just south of our condo was Cocoa Beach and its famous pier that jutted 800 feet into the sea.